


Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

by worryless2020



Series: MCR Album Fanfics [4]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen, mild violence, some strong language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22268989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worryless2020/pseuds/worryless2020
Summary: This is a work of fiction inspired by the themes, song titles, lyrics, characters and music videos from the album 'Danger Days' by My Chemical Romance. I claim no credit for the creative work of My Chemical Romance which provided the inspiration for this piece.
Series: MCR Album Fanfics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595179
Kudos: 1





	Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

DANGER DAYS: THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS

1\. Look Alive, Sunshine . 2. Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) . 3. Bulletproof Heart . 4. Sing . 5. Planetary (GO!) . 6. The Only Hope For Me Is You . 7. Jet-Star And The Kobra Kid / Traffic Report . 8. Party Poison . 9. Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back . 10. S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W . 11. Summertime . 12. Destroya . 13. The Kids From Yesterday . 14. Goodnite, Dr. Death . 15. Vampire Money

“Look alive, sunshine!” boomed a voice from the radio. “Yes, that’s right – you’re here with me, Dr. Death Defying, taking you right through from ten a.m. – that’s now – until half past noon! What's ha– ”  
“Christ, not this fucker!” said Mikey.  
Frank grabbed the passenger seat in front of him and pulled himself closer to it to peep around and look at Mikey.  
“Dr. Death? You don’t like him?” he said, both surprised and displeased.  
“No, I don’t like him! He’s a pompous bastard. Have you heard the way he carries on? Thinks he’s God’s fucking gift to radio listeners.”  
Gerard laughed, but kept his eyes on the road, even though, in the desert they were driving through, there was little chance of a collision.  
“Whoa!” exclaimed Ray, in response to Mikey’s comments on Dr. Death Defying. “That’s harsh, man.”  
“And yeah, I have heard the way he carries on,” answered Frank. “That’s what makes him God’s gift to radio listeners!”  
Mikey turned around to look into the back of the car.  
“So you all like him?”  
“Hell yeah!” replied Ray.  
Mikey’s brow furrowed in disapproval.  
Gerard laughed again. “Yeah, Mikey has quite the vendetta against Dr. D.”  
“And I thought you were the only weirdo in the universe who actually liked him.”  
“I know you did! Fuck, he plays some mean tunes, man!”  
“I know, right?!” said Frank.  
Gerard’s eye was caught by movement in the rear view mirror.  
“Hey, should we phone in a request?” said Ray.  
“Not from him!” Mikey replied.  
“Hey guys, look, there’s someone coming up behind us,” said Gerard.  
Mikey looked in the wing mirror on his side while Frank and Ray turned and peered out of the rear window.  
“Oh yeah,” said Ray.  
“God, they’re really picking up speed!” Frank exclaimed. “We couldn’t see them a minute ago and – What kind of a fuckin’ hurry are they in?”  
A white SUV was approaching the Killjoys’ Trans Am at an alarming speed.  
“Oh fuck, Gerard,” said Ray when the SUV got close enough for he and Frank to be able to see the faces – or rather, masks – of the driver and passenger. “Step on it, it’s the fucking Draculoids!”  
“Shit!” Gerard exclaimed, keeping an eye on the rear view mirror, and pressed down hard on the accelerator.  
All Draculoids wore the same horrible white mask over their heads. A red open mouth with miniscule yet intimidating teeth adorned the bottom half. An insignificant nose sat below eyeholes so small that the wearer’s eyes could hardly be seen at all. The result was that Draculoids’ eyes seemed simply to be small black ovals. The masks also came complete with real black eyebrow and head hair.  
Draculoids were the mute henchmen of Korse, the CEO of Better Living Industries, or BL/ind. BL/ind was the only corporation still in existence, since the apocalypse it had orchestrated in order to make its objective more achievable. Its objective, ultimately, was to control the lives of the people – all the people – and to do that it first had to build a population consisting solely of its loyal servants and supporters. Since converting every human being on the planet hadn’t been feasible, Korse and his existing loyal servants had initiated a controlled apocalypse: they wiped out the entire planet, excepting themselves, all their employees, and anyone else whom they knew to be believers in the company and its philosophy, to make a fresh start. Why try to convert more than seven billion people, when you can exterminate those who won’t back BL/ind, and start from scratch building up a population who will?  
BL/ind’s one problem was the escapees of the apocalypse, the ones who had slipped through the net, of whom there were only four, known collectively as the Killjoys.  
The Killjoys had been a powerful force for good before the apocalypse. They had held something of a superhero status, without actually having superpowers. They were (extra)ordinary human beings. For this reason, Korse saw them as potentially the most valuable assets BL/ind could ever hope to have, if they could be converted.  
They had been among the intended victims of the apocalypse, but Korse was thus hoping to take advantage of their survival. The Draculoids were under orders not to rest until the Killjoys had been captured.  
Gerard managed to slowly increase the distance between the Trans Am and the Draculoids’ SUV. If the Draculoids were in fact driving at top speed, it seemed that for all BL/ind’s meticulousness, the horsepower of their company vehicles was suboptimal.  
“Keep watching out the back window, will you, guys?” Gerard said to Ray and Frank.  
“Yep,” they replied together, both with heads turned watching the road and surrounding wilderness fly by behind them.  
The Trans Am was now starting onto an incline.  
Mikey was constantly switching his gaze from the road ahead, to the wing mirror, to the red sand and brown scrub flying past outside the window.  
“Fuck!” exclaimed Gerard, reflexively swinging the car left when he saw a second SUV coming towards them at the top of the slope they were ascending.  
They had veered out into the desert, but had nowhere else to go. The SUV that had driven up to meet them was hot on their tail, but like the first one, seemed not to have the power to be able to keep up with the Trans Am. Frank and Ray kept watching out the back. The first SUV wasn’t too far behind the second, but again, the space between the Killjoys and the Draculoids began to widen slightly.  
Gerard glanced down at the fuel gauge and then quickly returned his gaze straight ahead.  
“What are we gonna do when we run out of gas?” he said.  
“What? Are we nearly out?” asked Frank, turning to face the front of the car again.  
“Well, not really, but these guys aren’t gonna give up, we’ll be driving indefinitely with no chance of finding a gas station out here. Even if we did, stopping to fill up would be as good as surrendering.”  
“We’ll just have to hope they run out of gas before us,” said Mikey. “There’s nothing else we can do.”  
Gerard nodded.  
He kept his foot to the floor, his hands firmly on the wheel, and his gaze straight ahead. It would have been utterly pointless to veer left or right. There were no turns they could make or detours they could take where the Draculoids wouldn’t easily be able to see and follow them.  
The tyres sent sand spraying up around the car. They jolted over the occasional rock embedded in and sticking out of the sand, which they generally encountered too suddenly to avoid. Four minds raced as they wondered whether they would escape, and willed the Draculoids to run out of gas. Although none of them acknowledged it aloud, they all knew that they were more likely to run out of gas first. The Draculoids had most likely come prepared for a long chase the Killjoys had not foreseen.  
The Trans Am was solidly ahead, but was still well within the Draculoids’ view, and would have little hope of increasing the distance between them by any more.  
While Ray and Frank kept watching out the back, Gerard and Mikey squinted as they noticed something strange up ahead. A reflection of the sun was glittering on a spot on the ground.  
“What the…?” Gerard craned his neck to bring his head closer to the windscreen to peer out.  
When they got close enough to identify the object reflecting the sun as a rather expansive oasis, they were also close enough to see that the water was quite clear. As they got still closer, they were able to see that it looked little deeper than a large puddle.  
Gerard quickly weighed up his options: to drive through or around the oasis. If they weren’t heading for it so quickly, he would have asked the others for their opinion. But time wouldn’t allow, so they were just going to have to trust his judgement.  
He made a sharp right.  
“What?!” Mikey exclaimed. “What the hell are you doing, man, it’s as shallow as fuck! They’re gonna drive straight through it no problem and then they’ll be on top of us! Fuck’s sake, Gerard, you’ve just got us kidnapped.”  
Gerard felt a pang at the sound of his words.  
“It’s not too late, you could cut through now,” said Ray, after turning around to face the front of the car.  
“It is too late! We’re practically around it now,” Mikey replied. “Fuck!”  
“And they – Yep. They’ve just driven straight into it,” said Frank, watching out the back.  
“If we were to try and cross it now we’d just be going to meet them, practically,” Mikey added.  
“Look, guys, I’m sorry if I’ve fucked this up but I just wasn’t willing to take the chance that we might get stuck. This car is so low…”  
The Killjoys had now just skirted around the oasis, and the Draculoids were fast approaching the middle of it, splashing water up around their cars but still going strong.  
“Fuck, Gerard,” Mikey said, massaging his forehead.  
“Mikey, cut it out! Can’t you see he feels bad enough? He had a call to make in seconds, under immense pressure. It could’ve been any one of us in his position,” said Frank.  
Mikey said nothing.  
“Thanks man,” Gerard said to Frank quietly.  
He continued to take the car along at top speed but was beginning to feel as if doing so was pointless.  
It was now out Ray’s window, on the left hand side of the car, that he and Frank had to look to keep an eye on the SUVs. But Frank was still distracted by his annoyance about Mikey’s impatience with Gerard, and was silently willing him to apologise.  
“Whoa, guys! Guys, look, they’re slowing right down!” exclaimed Ray, watching the SUVs, now at best trudging through the oasis.  
Their tyres appeared to be almost completely submerged.  
“No fucking way!” said Frank, now watching their progress as well. “Oh my God, pray! Pray that they get stuck there.”  
The vehicles slowed even more. As the Trans Am began its journey away from the oasis altogether, Frank and Ray went back to looking out the rear window. The last they saw of them, before they totally lost sight of the Draculoids, they had ground to a complete halt.  
“Yessss!” cried Ray, turning around to face forward again.  
Frank, Gerard and Mikey each breathed a sigh of relief. Not one of them could help but smile to himself.

* * *

When eventually they ran out of gas, they quickly abandoned the car, bringing nothing except themselves and Frank’s backpack, in which he was carrying some random odds and ends, but also a generous supply of water, which they guessed they would need pretty badly before too long.  
“Fuck, it’s hot,” sighed Ray, rubbing his arm across his forehead.  
“I know,” said Frank, “but we have to keep moving.”  
“Yeah,” Mikey agreed, as they began to resume their journey on foot. “We can’t assume those bastards have stayed stuck. Korse could have sent reinforcements, even.”  
They walked, drained, in silence for several minutes.  
Mikey was the first to speak again:  
“Gerard… I’m sorry for yelling at you like that back at the oasis. Clearly, you made the right call. If we’d gone through, we would’ve gotten stuck and they’d have had us. You saved us.”  
Gerard threw him a sideways glance and grinned.  
“Yeah, just so happens I did. And it’s okay. You know as well as I do that I’d have been capable of similarly harsh words had our roles been reversed. We get over and forget about these things, right?”  
He moved a step closer to Mikey and threw an arm around him.  
“Right. Thanks.”  
Gerard removed his arm from around Mikey’s neck, but gripped and lightly shook his shoulder before letting his arm back down by his side.  
Following another period of slow, rather aimless walking in virtual silence, all four Killjoys pricked up their ears, almost simultaneously. They exchanged thinking glances. The origin of the sound wasn’t near. They could barely hear it, in the stillness of a barren wasteland. But they knew what it was.  
“The Draculoids. They must’ve made it out,” said Frank.  
What they heard was the unmistakable hum of an engine, or engines.  
“Okay. Guys, I’ve been thinking about what the best course of action would be if this were to happen,” said Gerard.  
“And?” replied Ray.  
Gerard looked at him hesitantly.  
“Stop walking,” he said in a tone that made it clear there was more to come.  
“And?!” said Frank urgently after a pause.  
“Crawl.”  
“Are you insane?! Why on earth – ? That’ll slow us right down,” Mikey said.  
“Really? We’re not going too fast as it is, are we?”  
“Oh but come on, we could walk faster. We already are, I think, since we heard them. Crawling… It’d definitely be slower than this. So why – ?” Ray broke off, knowing that the other three knew how his question would end.  
“Because they’ll be less likely to see us from a distance,” Gerard explained.  
“Oh God,” Mikey groaned. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Oh God, I hate to say it. But you’re right. It’s smart.”  
“Right, so when you say crawl…?” Frank asked Gerard.  
Gerard looked at him for a moment, then got to his knees. He stretched out on the sand, face down, then using his feet, knees and elbows, shuffled across a short distance.  
He stopped and looked up at Mikey, Frank and Ray.  
“Jesus Christ,” said Mikey.  
But they all knew that Gerard had the right idea, and copied him.  
Veering off to the left with the hope of giving the Draculoids the slip, they crawled through the desert like four four-legged spiders. All the time they could hear the sound of the SUVs.  
“For all we know, Korse’s drones are tracking us and relaying the information to the Draculoids. They could know exactly where we are,” said Frank, after they had been crawling for about half an hour.  
“Then why haven’t they found us yet?” Ray answered. “They’re travelling a hell of a lot faster than us now.”  
“Why haven’t they run out of gas yet?” said Gerard.  
The others were silent.  
“Guys, look,” Frank said, some time later. He paused to point to a large boulder about two hundred yards to their right. “I reckon that’s big enough for us to hide behind so we can rest for a little while.”  
“Okay, but hide on which side?” said Mikey. “We don’t know where the Draculoids are.”  
“Not exactly, but listen,” replied Frank.  
Everybody stopped crawling, shut their mouths, held their breath, even. The noise of the cars certainly wasn’t coming from anywhere ahead of them. Nor was it coming from the right or the left.  
“Yeah, they’re almost certainly behind us somewhere,” Gerard said.  
“Right? So we just hide behind the rock on the other side,” said Frank.  
“I’m in,” said Ray. “If I weren’t already on the ground I’d be ready to collapse right now.”  
They picked up speed to scuttle over to the boulder, and when they reached it, sat in behind it in a row with their backs up against it. Gerard threw his head back and sighed heavily. Mikey looked at him and then touched his neck behind his ear.  
Gerard jumped.  
“What are you doing?”  
Mikey held up his fingers. There was a bright smudge of red on the tips. Gerard reached for his neck worriedly.  
“Nah, it’s okay,” said Mikey. “You’re sweating out your hair dye. I thought it was blood for a sec.”  
“Oh thank God! Yeah, I can’t even take a fucking shower without it looking like I’m haemorrhaging.”  
The others sniggered.  
Frank opened up his backpack and pulled out a large bottle of water. He held it out to Ray beside him.  
“Pass it down,” he said.  
Ray gulped thirstily for about five seconds, knowing that supplies were scarce and that he was surrounded by three men just as thirsty as he was.  
He passed the bottle to Mikey, who passed it to Gerard, both of whom drank similarly modest amounts before returning the bottle to Frank. He took his own share and then put it away again.  
“If we’re lucky those bastards will drive past us,” Gerard said.  
They could still hear them. They seemed to be getting closer.  
“They just might. The sound of the cars is getting louder but… But I think they’re driving in a straight line – behind us by… well, a considerable distance – and not towards us. So they’re probably just getting closer to being directly behind us, if you know what I mean?” said Ray.  
“Yeah, I think that’s what it sounds like too,” replied Frank. “Like they’re going parallel to the line we’re forming here.”  
“Right, right,” said Ray, nodding.  
The four of them listened carefully, and breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of the vehicles started to get quieter again.  
“Do you think we could sleep?” asked Frank.  
The others looked at him.  
Ray shrugged, and looked to Gerard and Mikey for support as he said, “I mean, probably. As long as at least one of us stays awake to keep watch and listen.”  
Mikey and Gerard nodded.  
“Yeah, honestly, Frank, go to sleep if you can. It’ll do you good. Same goes for all of you but I don’t think I’ll be able to,” said Gerard.  
“Alright,” replied Frank, “but if you start to get sleepy you better wake someone to take over keeping watch because otherwise… well, who knows?”  
“Yeah, I will. Go on. Sleep.”  
Frank rested his head against the boulder and closed his eyes.  
Frank slept and Mikey dozed on and off for possibly an hour, but Ray and Gerard were too much on the alert.  
Ray had been sitting between Frank and Mikey so when they had fallen asleep, he stood up and moved to sit beside Gerard.  
“What are we going to do?” he asked him.  
Gerard sighed. He was occupied picking up small pinches of sand and letting the grains pour down again.  
“I don’t know, man. I have absolutely no idea.” After a pause he continued: “I guess besides staying here and dying of exposure or starvation – whichever comes first – our only option is to try and find our way back to the road. Even then, the Draculoids will doubtless still be after us, so given the time we’ll waste hiding from them, like now, we may starve or die from exposure anyway. Same thing even if they don’t keep after us. We might never find the road. The difference is that we will die if we just stay here, whereas there might be a small hope otherwise.”  
Ray had just opened his mouth to respond when he became aware of something moving right next to him on his right hand side. He whipped his head around, Gerard followed his gaze and they found themselves face to face with a Draculoid.  
When they turned in a panic to wake Mikey and Frank, they saw three more approaching from the other side.  
They hardly had time to think before the Draculoids were beginning their attempts to gain possession of a Killjoy each.  
Being grabbed roughly by the shoulders was what woke Mikey and Frank. When they came to and saw who was responsible they both screamed.  
That they were all on the ground already meant they were completely at the mercy of the Draculoids. And the Draculoids were strong. It wasn’t long before each of them had lifted a Killjoy to his feet and established a firm hold on him.  
The Draculoids had parked a considerable distance away so that their immediate approach could be a silent one.  
A lot of pulling, dragging and struggling made the journey on foot back to the SUVs a slow one. But ultimately the Draculoids’ strength was more enduring than the Killjoys’. What time they had spent driving in air-conditioned cars the Killjoys had spent first walking, and then crawling right down on their bellies in the scorching heat of the desert. It was no contest.  
The Draculoid holding Frank passed him roughly to the one holding Gerard. The latter restrained them both for a moment while the former opened a back door of one of the vehicles, reached inside and emerged with a roll of grey duct tape. He went around to each Killjoy, and while his accomplices held them still, used extremely generous amounts of tape around their middles to keep their arms by their sides, and around their legs to make walking or running impossible.  
When the Killjoys realised that he was also about to tape shut their mouths, they started shouting abuse at him, and the others, as if merely to use their voices while they still could. But within less than a minute the four of them were bound and silenced.  
Into the back of each car were thrown two Killjoys, while two Draculoids took the front.  
In the middle of the back seat in the car Gerard and Ray were in, sitting between them, was a large steel barrel with a yellow label on it. Printed on the label in black text was the word DESTROYA.  
Of course, Gerard thought. That’s why they never ran out of gas.  
The BL/ind company vehicles were run on Destroya fuel, of which the company had vast amounts, stored in such barrels, which could conveniently be brought on the road so the vehicles could be topped up anywhere.  
Neither car needed it, though, on the journey to Battery City, home to the BL/ind headquarters.  
When they arrived, the Draculoids pulled the Killjoys from the cars and dragged them inside. The interior of the overwhelmingly large complex abounded with bright lights, shiny surfaces and determined but happy-looking faces. The employees were either oblivious or indifferent to the fact that four people – still squirming to get away – were being dragged through the building, having clearly been abducted. If they recognised the Killjoys, they were probably only glad that their master had finally got his hands on them.  
The Draculoids took them to a room off the lobby, in which Korse was standing. He had clearly been anticipating their arrival. He barely reacted when the Draculoids piled into the room with their captives in tow. He merely swept his arm in the direction of four chairs, neatly lined up side by side, and facing a small back door to the room that looked like it was never used.  
The wall on the right hand side of these chairs had two long chunky nails protruding from it. Hung up on one of them were four sets of what looked like on-ear headphones. On the other were four ray guns.  
As if programmed to do so, the Draculoids brought the Killjoys over to the chairs and began removing the duct tape from their arms and legs. The tape over their mouths stayed put.   
They were then shoved down onto the chairs while Korse handed another roll of tape to each Draculoid. These they used to secure the Killjoys’ arms and legs to the arms and legs, respectively, of the chairs.  
The Draculoids were then dismissed without thanks.  
Korse turned to the Killjoys.  
“Well, well, well,” he said. He looked directly at Frank. “Fun Ghoul.” Then at Mikey. “Kobra Kid.” Then at Gerard. “Party Poison.” And finally at Ray. “And Jet-Star.” He paused before adding, “I believe. The Killjoys. Ordinary human… superheroes. Non-believers in Better Living Industries. The only remaining non-believers. But not for long. See those?” He pointed to the headphone-like devices on the wall. “We call them scarecrows. Brainwashing devices, essentially, but…”  
The four pairs of eyes in front of him widened with fear.  
“… we don’t like the word ‘brainwashing’. Sounds too… evil. All we want to do is convert. And it’d be great to have you on our side. You see… everyone who survived the apocalypse either worked for us, or simply believed in what we do. All we want is a… What shall we say? … streamlined… population. All believing and disbelieving in the same things, no differences of opinion and hence no conflict, no war! Imagine!  
“And all the children who have been born since the apocalypse are…” He pointed to the ceiling. “… upstairs. In classrooms. Being educated. In the basics of English and math of course but also in more practical things: how they can live their lives when they leave here – if indeed they choose to leave here – as true children of Better Living Industries. Supporters. Believers. Et cetera.  
“Anyway.” Korse clapped his hands together once. “Let’s get started.”  
He removed the scarecrows from the nail in the wall and with a smile, placed one on the head of each Killjoy.  
Mikey shook his head furiously to try and throw the device off, with the hope of perhaps breaking it if it fell to the floor. Seeing him, the others followed his lead.  
“Hey!” Korse shouted, and stepped back towards the wall to grab a ray gun.  
He pointed it at them.  
“Don’t make me,” he said.  
The Killjoys sat still.  
“Better.” He set the gun down on a desk a few paces to his right. “Now, let’s rig these babies up.”  
There was a knock on the door, from which the Killjoys were now facing away.  
Korse cursed to himself and then called, irritably, “Yes, come in, what is it?”  
The Killjoys turned their heads to see a woman enter the room. She was of Asian appearance and had sleek shoulder-length black hair.  
“Sir. Could I have a quick word?”  
This was Sara, Korse’s right-hand woman.  
The Killjoys watched for his response. He grumbled, but went to her. They stepped outside the door.  
The Killjoys looked at one another, wondering how they could take advantage of being left alone. They started again throwing their heads back and forth to try and rid themselves of their brainwashing devices, but even if their attempts were successful this would be likely only to be a temporary reprieve.  
Gerard tried to push his chair over backwards at the same time as Frank tried to stand up with his still attached to him. But they discovered that the chairs were nailed to the floor.  
They looked around the room for anything that could help them, but even if they spotted anything, they would have no way of getting to it to make any use of it.  
Their hopes were quickly fizzling away when the seemingly unused back door opened a crack.  
It caught Ray’s eye first, he being the nearest to it, and he watched it closely. A small face peeped around the corner.  
The gazes of Frank, Gerard and Mikey were now also turned towards the door. The face belonged to a little girl. She had bright blue eyes and dark curly hair, and was wearing a cute, cheeky grin. She slipped inside, leaving the door open.  
She looked blankly at the Killjoys, who were all doing the best they could to convey to her the message, “Help us”, with their eyes.  
Meanwhile, outside the room, Korse had just learned that Jenny, his daughter, was playing the truant by having snuck out from her lessons.  
“Well how did this happen?!” he demanded of Sara. “Incompetent fucking – ”  
“Sir! She is unlikely to have left the premises. Please stay calm. There are many people looking for her. I’m only telling you so that you can keep an eye out for her yourself.”  
Korse grunted. “Well… Just make sure those lessons get put on pause until she’s found, I don’t want her to miss anything. And whatever time is missed while the search continues can be made up tomorrow.”  
As the little girl looked at Ray, he tried to smile, tried to make it clear to her that he was smiling at her. But of course she couldn’t see his mouth, still stuck shut with duct tape.  
She kept looking at him, trying to read the strange movements of his facial muscles. He then crossed his eyes and rolled his head around in circles, hoping to make her laugh. It worked.  
Encouraged, Ray moved his mouth as best he could under the tape.  
“Hmmmm!” he said, as all he could say.  
Hoping for more funny faces, the girl approached him cautiously. He lowered his head to enable her to reach him.  
Gerard, Frank and Mikey watched, their hearts pounding.  
The little girl gently peeled the tape from Ray’s mouth.  
“Oh thank you!” he said with a grin. “Thank you so much. Would you be able to take the tape off from around my arms and legs as well? It’d be such a great help to me if you could. Will you help me?”  
The girl nodded.  
“Oh good girl!”  
All she saw were four men tied up and in distress. How was she to know that they weren’t on her dad’s side?  
As soon as Ray got free he knocked off his scarecrow and grabbed one of the ray guns from the nail in the wall.  
He was just in time, as the main door at the other side of the room now started to open. It remained ajar for a moment while Korse wrapped up his conversation with Sara.  
“Yes, yes, I know! Just find her! And be quick about it.”  
“Get behind me, like a good girl, I need you to hide. Just for a second,” Ray whispered to his rescuer, not wanting her to witness what he hoped would come next.  
The urgency in his voice led her to obey without question or hesitation.  
The door opened fully and Korse appeared.  
Ray pointed the gun at him. He froze.  
“No!” he said, spotting the little girl peeping out from behind Ray’s leg. “Jen– ”  
Ray fired.  
Korse went down instantly and the girl ran to him. Ray watched in surprise and the other Killjoys turned around to watch too.  
“Daddy?” said Jenny, looking down at Korse’s lifeless body on the floor.  
Gerard, Mikey and Frank turned back and looked at Ray, wide-eyed. His mouth had fallen open in shock. His arms hung limply by his sides, and in his right hand he still held the gun.  
He dropped it, watching the heart-rending scene that was unfolding before his eyes. Jenny had started to cry.  
In taking down the dictatorial head of Better Living Industries, he had also taken down a father.


End file.
